The Best Decks in Pauper After the Astrolabe Ban

Arcum’s Astrolabe is gone and Pauper has moved forward. And the future looks quite a bit like the past, but with some notable changes. There have been two major MagicOnline events as well as a complete League posting. And that means decklists. Let’s take a look.

Phizzle won the October 26th Pauper PTQ with this take on Boros Monarch. Boros Monarch is a midrange deck that combines efficient removal and reach with the ability to draw an extra card every turn thanks to interaction of Palace Sentinels and Prismatic Strands. While recent versions ran Astrolabe, it was not vital to the strategy and Alchemist’s Vial works just as well for drawing cards. The neat twist in Phizzle’s build is the presence of Golden Egg as another cantrip artifact.

The Egg makes a ton of sense. It can draw a card on its own or buy time with the Food function. It also helps to enable the “splash” of Okiba-Gang Shinobi. The Shinobi is not new tech and has been seeing maindeck play in Boros Monarch for a few months at this point to win card economy battles. Bojuka Bog and Prophetic Prism can help get the ninja into play, but extra avenues are helpful.

Boros Monarch is, in my opinion, the current best deck in Pauper. It has a consistent plan both pre and post-board. It has multiple ways to churn through cards and there is not much hate that is effective against these builds. But there are ways to attack, from running your own copies of Monarch cards to attacking their mana base with Geomancer’s Gambit–something that is very real if they decide to only run a pair of basic lands.

Stompy and Flicker Tron decks round out a triumvirate at the top of the metagame at the moment, but I want to take a look at some of the less established strategies that have emerged.

Didn’t we just get off this ride? Billster47 is keeping Jeskai Ephemerate alive. While the deck has lost the Kor Skyfisher–Arcum’s Astrolabe engine, it is still a powerhouse of a control deck. It has had to sacrifice the white cards for the sake of a stable mana base but can still turn Archaeomancer into a card advantage machine with Ephemerate. The deck is rounded out with all the hits you expect out of an Izzet Control deck with Counterspell, Lightning Bolt, Skred, and Exclude making an appearance. What’s nice, however, is that this is not the definitive build of a base-Izzet deck.

Oisicrat’s Izzet Puzzle deck runs the standard control package–Counterspell, cantrips, cheap removal. But it trades winning with Mulldrifter in for Flurry of Horns. The tokens Flurry makes, 2/3 with haste, get the job done when you have murdered every creature that comes across your path. Oisicrat also runs Mystic Sanctuary, allowing them to drop all the way down to one copy of Flurry that they could bin early if they want with Pieces of the Puzzle. I’m normally not a fan of this style of control, but Mystic Sanctuary has me rethinking my stance. Also, this currently looks like the best Swirling Sandstorm deck and that could be important if aggro is ascending.

Guerrierofantasma made Top 8 of the PTQ with this Teachings deck, and then an 80-card Teachings deck made Top 8 of the Challenge on the next day. The PTQ list is a scant 60 cards but has two win conditions: natural decking or Evincar’s Justice. The release of Devious Cover-Up has made the deck death plan more viable but more often than not Teachings wants to play a land every turn and eventually have Evincar’s Justice with a pair of Pristine Talisman. The biggest improvement as of late: Witching Well. The artifact provides another way to sculpt a hand early while sitting around waiting to be cashed in in the mid to late game gives the deck an opportunity to run Artificer’s Epiphany. Considering how long the game takes when everything is going according to plan, Teachings will have more than enough time to go down the well.

Before Gush was banned from the format, Dimir Delver was the deck to beat. Alicodendrochit is soldiering on with Dimir Delve–a deck that still wants to wing Delver of Secrets and Gurmag Angler into play early, but has a backup plan of attacking with First-Sphere Gargantua. Despite being almost all-in on the delve plan, this deck tries to be resilient to graveyard hate by eschewing Accumulated Knowledge for Rain of Revelation. The PTQ Teachings deck took a similar route, leaning on Artificer’s Epiphany as a reload mechanism. With Tron decks needing the graveyard to enact their lock, it makes sense for decks that would normally rely on the graveyard as a resource to find other avenues to avoid splash damage. Alicodendrochit’s deck does not want to leave that graveyard stocked, but has no problem filling it up.

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About The Author

Alex Ullman has been playing Magic for 24 years. Since 2005, he's spent most of his time playing and exploring Pauper. While he long ago put Pro Tour aspirations to bed, he has focused his energies on his favorite format to better understand its metagame and share the nuances of Pauper with the Magic-playing world. One of his proudest accomplishments was being on the winnings side of the 2009 Community Cup. He makes his home in Brooklyn, New York, where he was born and raised.